The presently disclosed subject matter relates to an electrocardiogram analyzer for analyzing an electrocardiographic signal acquired from a living body and also analyzing cardiac activities by monitoring arrhythmia, or the like.
Throughout the specification, monitoring arrhythmia or monitoring includes comparing an electrocardiographic complex of a test subject acquired per heart beat with a reference waveform, to thus determine if the heart beat is arrhythmia, and an alarm is generated to call attention when the heart beat is determined to be arrhythmia. A plurality of types of alarms are sometimes generated in accordance with a degree of arrhythmia.
An apparatus of this type hitherto stores a reference waveform previously determined through electrocardiogram complex learning, and arrhythmia is monitored by reference to the reference waveform. Here, electrocardiogram complex learning is usually practiced at the start of measurement when the test subject first experiences electrocardiogram measurement. An electrocardiogram appropriate for the test subject is not always determined to be a reference waveform. Specifically, a waveform of arrhythmia, which deviates from a normal electrocardiographic complex of the test subject, could be determined as a reference waveform.
Provided that electrocardiogram complex learning is performed in the middle of occurrence of arrhythmia, a waveform of the arrhythmia will be determined as a reference waveform. A fact that arrhythmia has occurred during the learning is overlooked. In addition, there occurs a problem of appropriate analysis being not performed during arrhythmia monitoring subsequent to electrocardiogram complex learning.
On the contrary, there is a known electrocardiogram analyzer that automatically chooses multiple representative heart beats from among a plurality of heart beats in one analysis operation and that analyzes the thus-selected plural representative heart beats, displaying names of diagnoses with regard to the respective heart beats (see Japanese Patent No. 2834057).
The apparatus is advantageous in that an appropriate name of a diagnosis is displayed with regard to a heart beat, which does not include any artifact, in the plurality of representative heart beats. However, there is a necessity of identifying the diagnosis. For this reason, the apparatus is inappropriate for a case where there is a desire for acquiring an appropriate result from the apparatus, and the apparatus also raises a problem of time being consumed when a user makes a determination.